Transcription
Infantilized adults never stop whining over the relatively minor shortcomings of their parents. Father's Day used to be a time for expressing thanks, showing gratitude, uh, giving Texas Roadhouse gift cards to the dads of the world, but things have changed.
Father's Day is different these days. Now, Father's Day is most often the time for celebrating women. And the Toronto Star made that clear with the article they ran on Father's Day yesterday, headline on Father's Day. It's crucial to recognize the importance of mothers. Now, the astute observer might point out that we already have a day for that. It's called Mother's Day.
We also have many other days set aside for women. There's International Women's Day, Equal Pay Day, Women's Entrepreneurship Day, International Day of Women and Girls in Science, International Day of Women in Mathematics, International Women in Engineering Day, International Day of the Girl, and of course, Women's History Month, and just for good measure, breast cancer awareness month, which is even the which even the NFL observes by outfitting their players in pink all month long. And amid all these days set aside to remember, celebrate, appreciate, uh, talk about, raise awareness for women, there is just one dedicated to heterosexual men. And the Toronto Star wants to make sure that we take even that day away and give it to women because heterosexual men cannot have a single day for themselves.
But I may be slightly exaggerating because, of course, uh, it is okay, even encouraged, to spend a little time on Father's Day acknowledging your father. That is provided that you are lecturing him about all of his many flaws and scolding him for all the ways that he let you down. That was the theme of an op-ed in the New York Times also posted yesterday, Father's Day, and written by the paper's senior staff editor, Susanna Meadows. The piece is titled "What My Dad Gave Me."
Now, I don't mean to spoil the ending, but apparently her dad gave her a bunch of stuff that she didn't want and didn't give her things that she did want. And Susanna, who from the looks of it is in her 50s now, still has not gotten over the disappointment. So, she decided to publish her indictment of her father in the pages of the New York Times while her father is still alive in a nursing home.
Meadows writes, quote, "My father gave me his freckly skin, and like him, I had melanoma. He gave me asthma and protruding elbows that are identical to his own. He gave me reddish hair that's kindly reluctant to go gray. He gave me an aversion to drinking by not having one himself. He did not give me the seat next to him at the San Diego Chargers game. He had season tickets when I was a kid, but I only found out about it years later. He gave me the ability to talk to anyone because I couldn't stand the awkward silences that he provided. He gave me really nice houses to grow up in, but we moved a lot for his work and things never seemed to be going well. Also, he gave me financial anxiety, too. He gave me the tools to withstand a sexist world. He would say, 'Hillary looks ugly in her pants suit and her voice. Women don't belong on the golf course.' This was my exposure therapy. He gave it generously."
So, we've learned so far that Susanna blames her father for giving her freckles, skin cancer, and asthma, uh, for drinking too much, for not making enough small talk, for pointing out correctly that Hillary Clinton looks ugly in a pants suit, though, in fairness, she looks ugly in anything, uh, for not making enough money at his jobs, and for not taking her to baseball games, although I can sort of understand why he didn't take her to the baseball games. Um, I I can't imagine listening to this kind of insufferable whining while I'm trying to watch the game.
And the whining continues. Susanna informs us that her father also failed to sufficiently answer her questions while he was watching baseball games. Quote, "He didn't give me a response when I was little and watching a baseball game on TV with him. Why? I wanted to know. Did the umpire call a strike when the batter didn't swing his bat? He couldn't be bothered to explain."
Now, of course, we're only getting one side of the story here, and this is the only side we'll ever get. She reveals later in the piece that her dad, now in his 90s, had a stroke and can't read anymore. So, so now that he's brain damaged and unable to read, she's taken the opportunity to publicly unload on him. But remember, she's the good guy here. And and still, if her dad was able to get his side of the story, I'm guessing based on what I know about kids that he probably did answer her question about the umpire like the first 15 times she asked it; it was on the 16th time that he started ignoring her. Or maybe he ignored her the first time. I mean, that would be rude, but it wouldn't justify publishing a hit piece about your own father in the New York Times on Father's Day.
In the whole piece, there's only one allegation of misconduct that she makes against her father that, if true, would be seriously bad. She writes, quote, "Some things I took from him, his Fox News when I set up his cable. Copies of love letters he'd written to a woman who wasn't my mom that I found when I was helping him move. I gave him things, too. I gave him disappointment when I was born a girl. Then I gave him grandsons."
Now, if he was having an affair at some point, though we don't know if this claim is true or if it did happen, how long ago it was, or for how long it went on, um, or if these love letters were even written while the mother was even still alive, because apparently she's not anymore. But, but, you know, if there was an affair, that would be a very bad thing. Yet, that's all the more reason that you don't you don't publicly shame your father by publishing it in the newspaper. Confront them about it privately. Yell about it. Cry about it. Do what you feel you have to, but don't make it public.
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The world doesn't need to know and shouldn't know. Susanna tries to wrap things up on a hopeful note, but it's not nearly enough to justify the disgracefulness of publishing all this in the first place. Quote, "On a recent visit, we had coffee together in the dining room of the assisted living place. Refusing his eternal gift of awkward silence, I kept the conversation going. I don't remember what we talked about, but I am sure he eventually asked questions about my husband, my boys, and David Brooks. At one point, I reached across the table and gave him my hand. I'd never done anything like that before, and I'm not sure why I did it then. He took it." That's the end of the piece.
So, the lone positive note about her dad is really a positive note about herself. Susanna is congratulating herself for being so tender and loving and forgiving, though not forgiving enough to forgo the opportunity to castigate her sick elderly father in front of the entire world and in the process uncovering embarrassing details about his life without having given him the chance to explain any of it or provide any context or correction.
Now, this article is obviously part of the anti-male agenda that insists on turning every occasion, even occasions meant to celebrate men, into man-bashing sessions. But it's also part of a deeper trend, and that is the trend where infantilized adults never stop whining over the relatively minor shortcomings of their parents. And this is a pretty modern phenomenon when you have adults that just never stop at any point in their lives. They never get over even the smallest thing that their parents did wrong.
Now, if her dad really had an affair, well, that's a far more serious shortcoming. Although, she can't really claim to have been traumatized by that as a child if she only found out about it as an adult. But all the rest of these complaints are absurdly trivial. If you're an adult and you have these kinds of complaints about your parents, there is only one solution. There's only one therapeutic treatment plan that can be effective or appropriate. And the plan is this: Get over it. Get over it, you whiny child, and move on with your life. This is a middle-aged woman still sitting around and weeping over the fact that daddy didn't take her to a baseball game when she was 12. And she's not alone. I mean, there's a whole legion of narcissistic adults out there who spend their entire lives blaming all their struggles on the mistakes and alleged mistakes of their parents. And they're often conditioned into this way of thinking, of course, by the therapy industry, which pushes whiny narcissists to never get over anything and instead rehash the same slights and misfortunes over and over again forever.
Like when she sits down with a therapist, uh, and I I assume she's gone through like 50 of them, and when she sits down with her 50th therapist and starts telling her whole life story again, and women like this, they just love it; it's it's like they get a high off of they get to tell their whole sad story to a whole new person. This is great, and um, and she tells us, and when I was 10 years old I found out he had season tickets and he didn't take me to one baseball game. You know, when she does that, the therapist is going to sit there, oh, that's interesting, and like start, you know, jotting little notes in the notepad when really what the therapist should say is, "Why are you telling me that? But he didn't take you to a baseball game. How old are you now? Was that this is 40 years ago? You're still complaining? How do you even remember that? You got nothing more important going on in your life? Are you kidding me?" That's never the response, although it should be.
It's likely that nobody has ever rolled their eyes at Susanna and told her to stop crying like a baby because dad didn't give her enough attention. Instead, they've encouraged her to believe that her complaints are somehow poetic and tragic and profound. Now, here she is writing about them in the New York Times, but there's nothing profound about them. Susanna, your dad was a human being. He was not perfect. He made mistakes. He had flaws and weaknesses. I bet he also had strengths and virtues which you don't mention in your diatribe at all because they would interfere with your martyrdom narrative. See, for someone like you, even the things that a person does for you are recast in your mind as sins against you. For example, you tell us that you moved around a lot because things didn't seem to be going well at your dad's jobs. And yet, you also say you always lived in nice houses. So, it sounds to me like your dad was a hard worker who kept striving and struggling. And even amid his difficulties at work, he always made sure that you were comfortable and cared for. But you give him no credit for that. Instead, you blame him for giving you quote financial anxiety. And you haven't stopped to consider that maybe the much greater financial anxiety fell on his shoulders. Maybe that's why he was a little quiet sometimes. Maybe he was dealing with enormous burdens that he didn't tell you about. Maybe he was doing his best to give you the kind of life that he never had as a child. Maybe he did his best, but it wasn't perfect. Or maybe not. You know, maybe the guy was a total scumbag. I have no idea. I don't know him. But I know enough about you, Susanna, just based on this article alone to know that the man could have been on balance a great father and you would still be writing this self-pitying soliloquy. You're the kind of person who remembers the smallest slight committed against you 40 years ago. Okay? Yet someone could have done a great act of generosity for you five minutes ago and you've already forgotten it. You keep a tally of the mistakes everybody else makes. Meanwhile, you make mistakes, too. You're making them right now. You made one when you decided to shame your elderly father in front of the entire world. So maybe you should focus on your own current faults for a change and leave the past in the past.
And that is why you are today, Susanna, cancelled. If you'd like to see what else I have to say, you can access my full show by going to dailywire.com or by going to the MattWalshShow Twitter page. Hope to see you there. Godspeed.